Hanspeter Stutz, owner of Domaine de Grand Pre winery, has partnered with Ted Grant to create Viveau, a company that is combining Nova Scotia fruit juice with mineral water to make a healthy drink for export and the domestic market. - Ryan Taplin / The Chronicle Herald

HALIFAX, N.S. —

A lunch in Halifax for Hanspeter Stutz this week reinforced to him the belief that his new business venture is on the right track.

Stutz, the owner of Domaine de Grand Pre winery, has partnered with Ted Grant to create Viveau, a company that is combining Nova Scotia fruit juice with mineral water to make a healthy drink for export and the domestic market.

Stutz’s non-alcoholic beverage choices at lunch at the “fairly famous” Halifax restaurant were Red Bull or pop, and he’s sure a healthier choice will be popular.

Viveau’s drinks, which come in Crisp Apple, Ripe Cherry and Wild Blueberry flavours, are modelled on the extremely popular European drink Schorle, which combines apple juice and mineral water. Stutz drank it copiously as a boy in Switzerland.

“First comes the mother’s milk, then the Schorle and after that, wine,” he said.

Export opportunity

Stutz and Grant travelled to Asia in the fall to have exploratory talks, which went so well they’re heading back this month to finalize deals.

“There’s already been a tremendous foundation around wild blueberries that’s been laid in the Asian countries,” Grant said. “With the growth of the Chinese market, we know we can piggyback on the strength of the blueberry with a great value-added product that we bring to them at a really good price point. And we can move volume, a lot of volume of blueberries.

“We come with our branded bottles, our full pricing structure, we come ready to go. All of the clients that were interested in November are saying they can’t wait.”

The fruit in Viveau is all from Nova Scotia, and is pressed at the Terra Beata cranberry farm in Lunenburg County. It’s then combined with mineral water at the Spa Springs Mineral Water Co. outside Middleton in 230 millilitre and 750 millilitre bottles.

“(Nova Scotia apples and blueberries) are internationally revered, some of the best fruits in the world are our apples and blueberries. You look at them from a health perspective and they’re all so good for you,” said Grant.

“The mineral water here ... has a very high calcium content, and calcium is shown to have a greater uptake from water than dairy. It has a high bicarbonate rate, getting oxygen to your lungs, a high manganese rate. It’s a very special water, and that’s why we chose this place to partner with.”

“(Viveau is) carbonated, it has no added sugar. What sugar is does have is fructose, and very low.”

Job creation plans

Viveau employs three people now, and that will soon expand to seven jobs, all in Nova Scotia. Grant said there are plenty of challenges in the food and beverage sector, negativity high on the list.

“There are a lot of people that you go up against that say you can’t do it here in Atlantic Canada, and we say: ‘Yes, we can.’ That’s what makes us more determined. The more naysayers, the more we get excited,” he said. “We’re modelling what it looks like to do something great with value-added fruit, value-added production. That’s what the the province needs to focus on more, to enable entrepreneurs like Hanspeter and me to get turned on to the opportunities that are in value-added waste stream reduction.”

While acknowledging that the province’s supply of frozen blueberries is vast, and that the apple crop is also robust, Grant said they’ve already talked about needing to go elsewhere for supply.

“The thing is, how big can we grow? Because if we go so big, we’ll outgrow Nova Scotia fruit, so then we start to look at New Brunswick, see if there’s something in P.E.I. and perhaps go to Quebec and Ontario,” he said. “One of our investors has a huge plot of land and we’re looking at doing our first orchard. As many as we can possibly do here, we will max out the capacity of Nova Scotia fruit.”

Domestically, Grant said Sobeys is already on board, and he expects Viveau to be on grocery store shelves throughout Atlantic Canada within a month.

They’ve also met with a large Ontario restaurant group and with Costco, and Grant expects to produce a few hundred thousand bottles by the end of the year.

Stutz said while the export market has considerable potential, he’s more concerned with first succeeding close to home.

“I think the highest priority is to build the domestic market,” he said. “That’s my target. We have to focus at first on the domestic market, and then we can go to China. It will be absolutely crazy in the Asian markets. I’m pretty sure that in two years, we will send one container per week to China.”